But of course you get a few comments about wasted time. A typical example, using a rather tired cliche:

"This is what﻿ scientists do instead of trying to cure cancer"

These comments tend to get hounded down by other viewers, who respond with comments like:

"Why people are moaning about this is why they haven't cured cancer and about wasting time... for all anyone knows this was done in free time and even the most random things can bring﻿ out good ideas... plus no one can expect anyone to be solidly working all day"

It's not an issue that bothers me. But sometimes I feel like responding.

First I'd say all videos like this are done in downtime. We wait for opportunities when the equipment's not being used for real science.

Sometimes we wait for weeks or months.

For example, the MRI scanner (a research scanner which isn't used for medical work) was used after work on a Tuesday night - and we waited weeks for the chance.

And outreach is an important part of science... In fact, "public engagement" is REQUIRED when most science is funded these days!

So rather than simply visiting a local school and explaining your job - why not be creative and find new audiences?

These egg videos have clearly reached a mixed audience.

And while it's not always showcasing REAL research, it is based on real work.

The videos contain information about the equipment, principles and work of scientists - sometimes we've just been subtle about it.

I'm sure some of our viewers have subsequently sought more information about biomechanics or MRI or pendulums or extra dimensions.

As one young viewer wrote: "Thanks for this,﻿ tomorrow I will ask some of my teachers on college about this."

At the very least we've YouTube viewers to think about science... And that can't be bad?

Who knows? Maybe one of those youngsters will go on to cure cancer one day!?

Oh, and we've demonstrated one other important fact that's often overlooked...

Scientists are just like everyone else - they like to have fun at holiday time!

Tuesday, 19 April 2011

As part of a Sixty Symbols Easter series, we've performed a series of "crash tests" on Cadbury Creme eggs.

They were performed at the University of Nottingham's Biomechanics Lab.

Dr Donal McNally, who oversaw our light-hearted "eggsperiments", has subsequently sent me the following facts and figures. The stuff at the end about calories is amazing!

DONAL SAYS:

"Here is the load deformation graph for the creme egg compression test you filmed. The egg deformed about 5.8mm (12%) before it started to fail. Once a crack had started, the load required to continue the failure dropped until the egg had compressed to about half its original height. After that, the force required to displace the gunge sideways to allow continued compression started to go up. The energy to initial failure was about 0.3J compared to 712,000J of chemical energy (170 Calories) it contains.

"At higher speeds (such as the Charpy tester) there is less time for the viscous centre to move out of the way so it has to move faster and therefore the viscous losses are much greater. In our case it turned out to be 11-14J compared to the 1.8J in the compression test for a similar level of disruption.

"The drop tower was simply overkill. The energy I wrote down on the bit of paper (150J) was the kinetic energy of the impacting weight. This is much greater than 14J. Interestingly the weight of the weight (as it were) is about the same as the quasi-static failure load in the original compression test.

"The kinetic energy of a 39g egg at 11ms-1 is 2.4J (the crash track test). The impact contact time is very short and the energy considerably smaller that that observed in the Charpy test. This is why the egg was hardly damaged.

"The difference between chemical energy density and mechanical energy density is huge. A creme egg would have to be moving at more than 6000ms-1 (Mach 20) for its kinetic energy to match its chemical energy. This is why petrol (and creme eggs) make excellent fuel. Similarly, your Mini car would need to do 77mph to have the same kinetic energy as the chemical energy in a creme egg."

By the way, here's what we did to some Creme Eggs last year in the name of chemistry!!!

It is impossible for us to answer every question and email we receive (especially technical ones).

But occasionally I like to share questions here on the blog and see if our informal "science community" can help.

The latest puzzle comes from someone named Juan....

His email is as follows (and for the record, we DO NOT condone the opening of batteries!):

I opened a 'Super Heavy Duty Battery' , to get the Zinc, Manganese Dioxide and graphite. After doing that I found a piece of metal and I do not know what is that, here are some properties I experimented:- Bad Conductivity of Electricity and Thermal.- It is light and it is a sheet.- It does not melt at 700 - 900 K , when I heat it, it seems to form some kind of Oxide on the metal and I can get rid of it easily.- It does not react with HCl.I thought it to be an alloy but these previous properties made me think of Titanium, but it is quite expensive so it would be strange.I hope you can help me. Thank you! And very interesting videos.

Saturday, 2 April 2011

It's a series of videos about every book in the Bible and other Bible-type stuff.

Some of it was filmed in Israel.

I think some people find my passion for the project surprising because I spend so much time focused on science.

Of course I'm aware that science and religion are often at odds.

But Bibledex is not supposed to be religious - it's just a bunch of academic experts talking about a famous and important book.

Like my channels about chemistry and physics, I'm just trying to find out interesting stuff and share it with like-minded, curious people.

This comment, recently posted on the Bibledex YouTube channel, summed up the project in a more eloquent way than I ever have... So I thought I'd share it:

"This is not a channel related﻿ to religion per se, but rather the Bible, the book which has influenced more people in history than any other. 2000 years of sculpture, painting, literature, poetry, philosophy, ethics, law and yes, science, too, were influenced by this book alone, and to underestimate this book's influence or ignore it is to purposefully render yourself blind to the context of much of Western History and Civilization. Great channel."